Gluten isn’t all bad and other stories on Examiner.com
I posted a couple of stories on my examiner column today – both referring to articles from Gaiam Life. The first one rips apart your excuses for refusing to exercise (or at least building your muscles). Time and equipment are no longer an acceptable issue!
The other one refers to an article that talks about the real problems with gluten – and it isn’t gluten.
Enjoy!
You are the master of you…what will you choose?
Inspiration. Energy. Touch. Power.
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.
- Goethe
Isn’t that amazing?
Our choices change our whole world, whether or not we think about it. The change might be small, a subtle shift, but it is there. How we think about the weather, about people around us, about politics, love, the experience of rush hour – all within our control. You hold the key to empowerment – for yourself AND, to a degree, for the people around you. Will you be the inspiration?
June 24 is Celebrate Your Senses Day! Let’s make it a month…
This just in: June 24th is Celebrate Your Senses Day!
So, we missed it. It seems that letting it extend for the rest of the month doesn’t seem like a bad idea…or maybe it could encompass the entire month of June! Five more days to celebrate. Ready to dive in?
The five senses aren’t just for kids any more – remember how fun that was in elementary school? Learning about touch, sight, smell, taste, sound? You got to eat raisins, right there in class! Well, it’s even better now. Adults use another word that encompasses the senses: sensuality.
Here’s a definition to get you started (Merriam Webster):
Sensual:
1 a : of or relating to the senses or sensible objects
b : producing or characterized by gratification of the senses : having strong sensory appeal (sensuous pleasure)
2 : characterized by sense impressions or imagery aimed at the senses (sensuous verse)
3 : highly susceptible to influence through the senses
Sensual stimulus is our connection with our entire world. Most everything we know, feel, understand, and struggle with comes through our senses, including pain and pleasure. Starting to get it? Sure, you learned about the senses when you were young, but how often do you actually pay attention to them?
And, if we’re taking in all those sensory signals anyway, why not allow ourselves to really enjoy it?
Try this (after reading, of course): Close your eyes. Sit back or lie down. What do you hear? Notice the little sounds, or even the buzz in the silence. What do you smell? Cleaning supplies…oh, try it again when you go outside. What do you taste? What does the chair feel like against your body? Then, open your eyes, letting the light and color around you spill in. See if you can see the color before you actually know what it is…
Now, allow yourself to go deeper into the experience. Do it now, or wait until you can try it somewhere else. Close your eyes again. Imagine sinking into that chair, that bench, that patch of grass you found, as if your body becomes fused with it. Bring your attention back to the sounds, tastes, smells and let them fuse into your body as well. Experience them as things that can be felt and examined in a sensory way – as if they can be picked up, turned over, observed. What color are they? What texture? Pick the most interesting ones and examine them through each of your senses again – what color and texture is that dog’s bark? What do those clouds smell like? Taste like? Then, when you open your eyes, let the world flood you again, as if the colors and shapes are coming into you rather than you going out to see them.
(If you’ve seen Fantasia, it’s a bit like that. Letting the sounds become colors and motion and images that carry you deeper into the experience.)
If you have extra time to play with this, take it, but this little adventure doesn’t need to take long. Remember, all of this sensory input is already happening – you are just taking a moment to notice, and process, more consciously. Slowing it down, just a smidge. Paying attention.
Then try it again the next time you eat, especially with that first slow bite (not as fun if you don’t like the food, but still, you can). Try it when you wake up in the morning, opening your eyes and letting the shapes and colors blearily in, without trying to figure out where you are or what they are. And especially try it the next time you make love, one of the most sensual – and ecstatic – experiences of them all.
So, for the rest of month, celebrate your senses. Not just cold, sweet ice cream with a cherry on top, summer afternoon children sounds, and the transition from extreme heat to air-conditioned lobbies but also the muscles and curves of the human form, light kisses on the back of your neck, and the pleasure of your sexual ecstasy.
Special thanks to the Salt Lake City Parenting Examiner for pointing out such a marvelous day (check out her sense games for kids – and don’t be afraid to make up your own). If like the idea of kisses on the back of your neck, you might enjoy this article on lesser known erogenous zones by the Modern Love Examiner. And lastly, be sure to check out the synonyms for sensuous on Merriam Webster, which I’ve included for your reading pleasure below:
Synonyms:
- SENSUOUS, SENSUAL, LUXURIOUS, VOLUPTUOUS mean relating to or providing pleasure through gratification of the senses.
- SENSUOUS implies gratification of the senses for the sake of aesthetic pleasure (the sensuous delights of great music) .
- SENSUAL tends to imply the gratification of the senses or the indulgence of the physical appetites as ends in themselves (a life devoted to sensual pleasures).
- LUXURIOUS suggests the indulgence of sensuous pleasure inducing bodily ease and languor (a luxurious hotel).
- VOLUPTUOUS implies more strongly an abandonment especially to sensual pleasure (a voluptuous feast).
Life is hard. Keep choosing joy!
Navigating the Waves
In the past couple of months, five people I know have died. Three of natural causes, two suicides. Some of them very close – my spiritual mentor for one, the others I liked, worked with, and shared company. Around me, friends and clients have lost loved ones as well, more than I have ever really noticed before.
Death is so often one of the big tragedies we face in life – and still there are so many others big difficulties: Financial struggles, relationships falling apart, serious injury, crime, bad days. We are emotional roller coasters, changing moods in an instant, over little things, big things, nothing at all. Going from depressed and downtrodden to happy and inspired happens in an instant – and goes in both directions.
It turns out, life is hard. Really hard sometimes. And as we get older, the hard parts tend to pile up – the days of innocence become nostalgic memories, replaced by responsibility, loss, worries. It can be easy to fall beneath that wave, churning and flailing in a big mean ocean. More difficult is realizing the choice we have.
Every single moment, we are making a choice, consciously or unconsciously. To live fully or not. To embrace the sheer sensual ecstasy of our existence or not. Sure, there are always degrees to that choice. Living fully might be angry, mourning, or melancholy sometimes. Once you’ve done that though, get back to the joyful part, the inspiration, the hope, the love. Celebrate what you have, who you are, your hopes and the unexpected mystery of whatever comes next.
Keep your head above the water! Remember, you do have a choice.
Seize the moment of inspiration
It hits you anywhere, often when you are relaxed. In the shower, driving, daydreaming, listening to music, right before sleep, a conversation with friends. Sometimes, it hits in the midst of brainstorming (IT IS A BRAINSTORM!), where your creative juices are already flowing, fueled by ideas flying through the air, waiting to picked like a handful of cherries. Particular places can spark it – sitting in front of your computer with a blank page, a walk by the lake, the backyard patio.
It hits and you are overwhelmed with excitement: “This is an amazing idea! It could change my life!” If you weren’t busy relaxing, you’d get up and write, paint, solve problems, change the world with great ideas…this idea. Difficult to even stay in your seat really, but first, you’ll finish the conversation, or at least your drink, then you’ll write it down. After all, something this vivid isn’t going away, right? The idea is far too astounding to be lost in the next couple of minutes…
But, minutes later, you scratch your head. Hmmmm. What was that again? As fleeting as a dream, it is gone – the magic faded, the momentum washed away. And even if you do remember, it just isn’t quite as enticing as it was before. Just a lingering feeling that it could have changed your world, or at least brought you more excitement, prosperity and joy.
Does this sound familiar? How often do you sacrifice the inspirations of your day to the gods of work, duty, boredom and laziness?
Of course, you can’t write a book or make millions NOW. There really are things that have to be done to manifest this inspiration from mind to matter. What you can do, though, is WRITE IT DOWN.
There is a method to that too – a couple of words will look just as dull a few hours later as if you didn’t record the idea at all. As best you can, capture in your note the feeling of the inspiration – the vividness, the image – as well as the mechanical details. What did you want to do or be and what words capture the feeling of it? Jot down as much as you can.
Then, don’t leave it hanging! Sure, if you’ve done your job when inspiration strikes, you might be able to recapture that idea and feeling months or years from now. Better than waiting that long is to at least allow it to fill you again before you go to bed, and the next morning when you get up.
Most importantly though, write it down NOW, when the moment comes, and let it keep on coming as you write. Be as complete and thorough as the moment allows.
Essential tools – a portable notebook and pen. Even better, a digital recorder – it’s faster and you can do it while driving. Maybe even from the shower if it’s close enough. The voice memo function on many cell phones is perfect, as long as you can one-touch it. Sometimes, even waiting for your word processor to open is enough time to lose the thought. You can always rewrite it later – just don’t miss it.
Carpe diem.
A little bit at a time
“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”
Sometimes – much of the time – we think we have to get it all done right now. Organize everything. Lose a billion pounds, eat only greens, cut out sugar forever. Meditate for an hour, 3 times a day, forever. Find enlightentment by midnight (and thus enjoy the meditating). Heal all wounded relationships, past and present. And future. Earn a million dollars a day. Become an activist, save the planet and all of its people.
But, since that isn’t going to happen today, why bother? Especially since all you have is 15 minutes before … (what was it you were going to do?) And in that 15 measely minutes, what could possibly change? Lose 15 calories and do 10 situps? Eat a carrot after? Take a deep breath?
Yes. Do that. Even the tiniest thing can start to create some momentum to be the You that you want to be. And at the end of the day, when all you did was exercise for 5 minutes, celebrate it! You didn’t do that yesterday. It was new and different and, it was progress. And, you made it through the rest of your day too.
Want to do more than that tomorrow? Ok! Do it! AND, celebrate even the tiniest of today’s victories. Sure, it may not be where you want to be yet, but keep it up. You aren’t going to save yourself and fulfil our dreams in a day. Probably not tomorrow either. But you can start.
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